“Treating advanced melanoma patients with either a combination of the immunotherapy drugs nivolumab (Opdivo™) and ipilimumab (Yervoy™) or nivolumab alone significantly increases progression-free survival (PFS) over using ipilimumab alone, according to new findings from researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) simultaneously presented today at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting and published online in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Examining specific characteristics of each patient’s tumor has also given researchers clearer understanding of which patients should receive the combination.

“These initial findings from the phase III clinical trial confirm the results of the phase II trial, presented just weeks ago at the American Association of Cancer Research annual meeting in Philadelphia and published by MSK researchers online in NEJM.”